1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communications, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for group paging.
2. Related Art
3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) long term evolution (LTE) evolved from a universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) is introduced as the 3GPP release 8. The 3GPP LTE uses orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) in a downlink, and uses single carrier-frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) in an uplink. The 3GPP LTE employs multiple input multiple output (MIMO) having up to four antennas. In recent years, there is an ongoing discussion on 3GPP LTE-advanced (LTE-A) evolved from the 3GPP LTE.
Recently, a machine type communication (MTC) system which performs communication between machines without intervention of a human user is actively utilized. A service provided through MTC is differentiated from the conventional communication service requiring human intervention, and its service range is various as follows. For example, the MTC provides various services such as tracking, metering, monitoring, payment, medical field services, remote controlling, etc., and is extended to various fields. An MTC device is a user equipment used in the MTC. The MTC device can have a limited mobility, and a plurality of MTC devices can exist in a cell. In such an MTC environment, due to the introduction of a great number of MTC devices, a problem may occur when the great number of MTC devices are managed, controlled, and paged by using the conventional paging procedure. Given that a limited number of user equipments can be paged simultaneously in a long term evolution (LTE) system, there is a need to consider a method for assigning and controlling a task for the plurality of MTC devices and a paging method.